Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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Of the "western democracies", or the "industrialized western countries", or however you want to lump those countries together:

* The US has unusual size, both geographically (which matters here) and population

* The US has unusual diversity

* The US has an unusually toxic history with racial diversity, in large part because unlike (say) Belgium, their racial history occurred almost entirely within their own borders

The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries.

We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black. The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole! As a demographic, they get less value from the public school system than any other, and so we have persistent pipeline problems reinforcing these disparities. Black people can't even reliably rent rooms on Airbnb. In 2016.

"Race realists" and "HBD people" would have you believe those phenomenon are due either to biological differences between black and white people, or to our pathological responses to those biological differences. That's horseshit, as the HBD's aptly demonstrate when they try to deploy and extrapolate from their corpus of dubious or cherry-picked statistics.

So I'd say: unless you truly believe that the black/white disparity in the US is genetic, the evidence for the US's outlier cultural issues with racism is right there in the numbers.

We're politically correct in part because we're right in the middle of trying to fix these problems.

Political correctness isn't a good thing. Also: when I take antibiotics, they wipe out my gut bacteria and give me stomach problems. That's not a good thing either! It is, in fact: a bad thing! But I don't call the whole enterprise of eradicating a bacterial infection in my body into question over it, nor do I back off the dose to try to minimize the bad side effect.

I don't disagree with your general point, which from what I understand is that the US has had, and still has, some nasty problems with racism.

But I have to take issue with this statement:

>racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries.

The two countries that you mentioned, Belgium and Japan, have absolutely horrific history of violent occupation/repression of other ethnic/racial groups, anchored in no small part by racist ideology. I'll throw in Germany as well, but I think just about any country/culture with much of a history will have some examples of the abysmal treatment of some minority group.

I dispute your view, if I understand it, that the US has a worse history or track record with racism. I'd say by in large, human history has a pretty poor track record in this respect.

Both Belgium and Japan have horrific track records of racism, and Japan's remains part of its culture, but the US is unique in that its worst problems with racism have been contained within its own borders. Ordinary Belgian citizens weren't routinely confronted with the Congolese.

I think I understand your point. Not to be argumentative, but the slave trade was a global enterprise. Beyond that, US support of European colonial rule, US support for apartheid South Africa, the war in Vietnam, there are many examples. These all had their racist overtones, if not outright racist justifications. I don't believe such a hegemonic culture/country has managed to keep its racist elements contained within its borders.

I'm not disputing that racism is endemic to humanity and prevalent in all cultures. I'm saying that the US is unique in having racism challenges that impact all its citizens on a day-to-day basis, directly, in ways that it is actively struggling to mitigate and/or metabolize. I'm not making a moral argument, just a descriptive one.

You keep responding as if to rebut an argument that the US is the world capital of slavery, or that the Europeans somehow have clean hands. I'm the wrong person to have that argument with.

> The two countries that you mentioned, Belgium and Japan, have absolutely horrific history of violent occupation/repression of other ethnic/racial groups, anchored in no small part by racist ideology.

Now imagine that 12% of the population of Belgium is Congolese, or that 12% of Japan is Korean/Chinese. Picture what that would do to the cultural and political dynamics of those countries.

The U.S. is relatively unusual in that its culture and political institutions have had to adapt to integrate a large minority population that, until recently, it viciously oppressed.

... and then another huge population of another disfavored minority.

I think the only country that comes close is the UK, but the UK's worst institutional racism excesses were offshored.

> The U.S. is relatively unusual in that its culture and political institutions have had to adapt to integrate a large minority population that, until recently, it viciously oppressed.

The US is relatively unusual in that these oppressed populations remain visible minorities. Without that difference lots of countries have similar problems, but if you are mostly only able to distinguish the oppressed group from the favored group by things like accent and elements of culture that blend with integration, you don't really have the same durable problems.

> The argument therefore isn't that the US is distinctively racist. It's not! Japan, for instance, is far more racist: it's an overt part of the culture. No, the issue is instead that racism germinated and produced toxic effects in the US to a greater degree than it did in other countries.

I think this is completely fair, but I also wonder if it's just because of America's inherent exposure. In Latin America, for example, "race" isn't as pointed (see the notion of a Mexican race), but skin color sure as hell does matter on a lot of levels, and that's because the rulers (Spanish) were light-skinned. That divide is still endemic and the cause of many issues in those countries. Is that any less toxic than what's happening in America? If you are one of those affected there, obviously not, and even to those not directly affected, it is arguable, or rather, it can't be argued at all.

> We're still grappling with those effects. We incarcerate a huge percentage of our population, and almost 45% of our prison population is black.

Absolutely. The system targets African-Americans. But what might be even more important is what % of our prison population is poor. Poor people go to prison because the system doesn't care about them, whether that's due to skin color or being born into the wrong family in a small town or any number of issues.

> The median income of a black family is just over half that of a white family. Black people are poorly represented in executive ranks. Look around you: they're poorly represented in technology as a whole!

This is undoubtedly true, but keep in mind that African-Americans are only about 12% of the population, in other words, they should be 1/10th of your co-workers (if we're going by ratio of the entire US population), which isn't as extreme as the racial disparities we might expect. Hey, in the Southwest, the bigger disparity lies with Hispanics - they are not represented fairly in tech, but we often don't think about them to the same extent.

If I'm trying to make a point, it's that these issues are endemic, and they are hugely problematic, but we have an undue focus on different parts of our society, whereas the problems that create them are often much wider in scope. We're looking for a bug in function B when it's really in function A and it's causing problems in function C, too...

What's happening is our modern economic system is balanced against a lot of people. If you are poor, your condition sucks, no matter your skin color. African-Americans see this disparity and it enrages them (as it should), and that creates movements (political or not). Poor whites see their condition and their (incorrect) recourse is to fight against this vague notion of "political correctness", and then you see the rise of Trumpism and other bad things.

I think trying to focus too much on race is to miss the larger systematic issue in our society, which is crony capitalism combined with globalism, and that doesn't care about your race.

I believe crony capitalism and poorly managed "globalism" are serious problems, but I see time and again direct evidence that economic circumstances aside, there is a black/white racism problem in the US, and I object to the pretense that we can ignore it while working on some fundamental root problem that will be a cure-all for other problems as well.

Wealthy black people have trouble getting rooms on Airbnb. Wealthy black people get stopped by the police at a disproportionate rate. The cops aren't doing that because Alcoa told them to.

I don't advocate ignoring it. In fact, I'd prefer that we did a much better job of desegregating the major cities (especially the school districts). It just doesn't do us any good to act like race in America is a southern problem, and it's odd to only cast it as such, which is what the OP did.

It's the same issue. You can't ignore problems, but you can't also assign them to a different scope than they are.

> It just doesn't do us any good to act like race in America is a southern problem, and it's odd to only cast it as such.

I don't think that's what was being said. The original comment was very specifically talking about the south in the past, and how past southern practices may have informed peoples experiences if they grew up there, and how recent some changes are.

But again, why bother talking about the south at all?

We are now far afield, and I'll stop arguing the point after this, but the topic is about Mexico, which then led to a discussion about "political correctness", and then the post in question which tried to say the reason Americans have issues with race are...only southern examples specifically cast against Western states.

Those same Western states have issues with racism; they would be just as effective to cite.

> But again, why bother talking about the south at all?

To specifically cast the experiences of people growing up in different parts of the country with different against each other to highlight how their views on race and racism may differ. The South is not being used for the purpose of vilifying it, but to explain how as a country people over a certain age may have had very different experiences with race in different areas of the country. It says absolutely nothing directly about the current state of the South, that's something you seem to have inferred from the comment (and whether it was meant as an implication is debatable, but it is not factual).

A statement could be made comparing and contrasting experiences of certain citizens of the United States 150 years ago and some other country that did not allow slavery. I wouldn't necessarily think that's meant to cast the US in bad light, but to use it as a tool to illustrate a point. It's obvious the US of today is not the same as the US of 150 years ago. It's also obvious the South of 40-50 years ago is not the same as the South today.

I think perhaps you're just a bit more emotionally invested in the perception of the South, and have seen the South as it currently is denigrated unfairly to a degree, which I'm sure happens, and you are conflating that type of occurrence and this. I just don't think they are equivalent.

I am emotionally invested, sure.

However, if you are trying to contrast things fairly, we could say:

* talk about racist policies against the Chinese in California in the 1800s

* talk about racist policies against the Irish and sentiments against Catholics throughout the country even just prior to JFK's election in 1960

* talk about racist views and policies towards interracial marriage in the South and Southwest

That's contrasting different experiences in time and place. That's being fair. The alternative...

> * talk about racist policies against the Chinese in California in the 1800s

Which does not directly affect current discourse, being removed by multiple generations from those alive today.

> * talk about racist policies against the Irish and sentiments against Catholics throughout the country even just prior to JFK's election in 1960

Sure, but then you're bringing religion into the mix. That seems unwise when trying to make a specific point that to that point has not included religion. It will just muddy the waters.

> * talk about racist views and policies towards interracial marriage in the South and Southwest

Also applicable, but less well known.

The point isn't to correctly spread the blame for bad behavior around equally, it was to explain why Americans have thin skin regarding race issues. The South is a valid example of this,and is the common example because it is so well known and recent. That may strike you as unfair, but fairness wasn't the point, communication was.

"Wealthy black people have trouble getting rooms on Airbnb. Wealthy black people get stopped by the police at a disproportionate rate. "

This is unfortunate and should be addressed but neither of those things will cause massive disenfranchisement among people.

Finishing high school and not joining gangs will do 1000x more for any community than any outside intervention.

>In Latin America, for example, "race" doesn't matter,

Unfortunately that is very wrong. The non-indigenous populations have very prejudice views of them throughout the region (central / south america). Not always overt (but often is) but from ingrained, subconscious views of them as lazy, slow, drunks etc.

Generally, if you watch the news here or TV in general you would be forgiven for thinking there are no indigenous peoples and would be shocked to find out that in fact they may make up 20, 30, 40+ of the population (depending on country).

Sorry, I edited that shortly before or after you posted, as I realized that's not a nuanced statement...

The point I was trying to get across was the very racist views towards natives while still embracing larger national notions of "race".

African-Americans see this disparity and it enrages them (as it should), and that creates movements (political or not). Poor whites see their condition and their (incorrect) recourse is to fight against this vague notion of "political correctness",

Totally false.

Asian Americans outscore their counterparts in every academic endeavour, and we wouldn't attribute their success to anything but their hard work.

Now - because 'Blacks are poor and commit a vast amount of crime' - they are justified in indicating this is due to racism - but when White people are poor - your indicating it must be their own fault.

This is delusional liberal thinking.

Yes, their is racism in America. Have you ever hung out with a group of Asian friends and gone drinking - and then asked them what they think of Black people? My cousin married a Chinese woman who is not hostile, but openly thinks blacks are inferior. She's not really even aware that it's 'racist' to her, it's just a matter of fact.

Most success and failure in America is due to what people chose to do with their lives, macro economic factors, and class. Not race.

> Now - because 'Blacks are poor and commit a vast amount of crime' - they are justified in indicating this is due to racism - but when White people are poor - your indicating it must be their own fault.

I don't think that was the assertion. I think he was saying the cause it poverty, the reasons for poverty are sometimes shared and sometimes different, but they attribute the source of the cause differently. If I understand him correctly, then his point is that poverty is the cause for problems, not racism, and both white and non-white people often assess the cause incorrectly, but in different ways.

I hear you.

But I think that the default assumption by so many is:

'Racism exists, ergo, racism is the primary driver of poverty, inequality' etc..

I strongly object to this assertion.

Of course racism exists, and it's a problem, and it needs to be dealt with - however - I don't think it's the primary root cause of anything. In fact - 'over aggressive policing' is probably a function of 'mass crime zones' - and not the other way around. Obviously there is a feedback loop here, in that extra hard policing creates more negative outcomes ... but if there weren't crazy amounts of crime, cops would be chill.

My grandparents were born on farms and grew up very poor by today's standards. They had almost nothing. There were guns on every farm ... and yet crime was rare. There were no gangs. They were of specific ethnic groups and certainly faced open discrimination - many would not speak or interact with my German great-grandparents. My grandfather's extended family did not attend his wedding because he married a Catholic (!). My great-grand parents on one side were disowned by both families because she was 'French Quebecois Catholic' and he was 'English Upper Canadian Protestant'. And yet somehow there wasn't 'mass crime'.

I'm not insensitive to the systematic issues some people face - and it's terrible - but by positing that 'the system is the problem' entirely removes really bad individual decisions that are made on a daily basis within some communities and this I find to be wrong and we have to be careful about.

We give a 'free pass' to some groups for upholding as 'de facto' role models, the absolute worst, most terrible role models imaginable.

I'm thinking 'Chief Keef' to start with. Brilliant artist. But his brand of music is boils down to: 'Look at me funny and I will kill you. See: here are the guns I will use. Of course, a 13 year old kid mocked him on youtube, and a few hours later, the kid dead, murdered by one of Chief Keef's goons. His videos boil down to shirtless teens in a room with guns, Ak-47's pointed at the camera - in threatening poses. So 'we' as a society - handed him over $1 Million dollars for a recording contract. Because of his ethnic background - we turn a blind eye to his call to mass murder- worse, we make him the role model for the community, what everyone else aspires to be. Nobody on CNN calls it into question. It's complete insanity. In 2016, you can literally call people to murder others, make a video about it, and as long as it has a nice beat - and you are from a group that is marginalized - you're a hero, you get a million bucks and hundreds of acolytes around town trying to copy you. These cultural issues I believe are closer to 'root causes' than police, trying to do their jobs, some of whom are idiots.

"Mass crime zones" are a direct product of racism. There's a reason that all the crime in Chicago is concentrated around Lawndale and Englewood: black people were redlined into the those neighborhoods, until the early 1970s.

I linked upthread to a Ta Nahesi Coates article. I think you should take 30 minutes and read it with an open mind. I thought I was on top of this stuff. But, damn.

> I linked upthread to a Ta Nahesi Coates article.

Okay, I just wasted more time than I'm comfortable admitting looping through trying to look for that link, getting distracted by new parts of the conversation, and starting over. Mind pointing it out?

Sorry!

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case...

(By the way: I don't particularly think reparations are a good idea. But: damn.)

Oh, that wasn't directed at you. I'm just too frazzled by the week I've had (first week back from vacation is always a zinger) to to function well at the end of a Friday, so figured I would cut to the chase. :) Thanks!

As for the Coates Article - I agree with a lot of the sentiment. And thanks for the link by the way.

Listen - I AGREE - that perhaps there should be 'reparations' - I'm not really against that. I AGREE that historical injustices have led to Black people being marginalized. I generally support affirmative action programs. I AGREE that copes, in some circumstances are simply racist idiots and something must be done about it.

But listen - in 1962 - young Black kids, with incredible poise, had to face down KKK open-racism to get to school.

In 2016 - the 1/2 Black Chicago police force had to create 'golden paths' - specially protected zones for kids to get to and fro school safely - so as not to be killed by other Black people. Getting kids to attend school, let alone graduate - is a serious problem. There are tons of resources and people doing everything they can to help. This is the opposite of the 1960's.

The situation is not anymore like the 1960s. We now have a large cohort of African Americans who seem to be doing pretty well - improving. But another cohort who are out of control. The rate of crime in some areas of America is the highest in the world where it's recorded. Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore - all have higher crime rates than those 'crazy violent' countries like Nicaragua, Coloumbia etc.

In the early 1960's - still very 'racist America' - there was 1/8th as much crime as there was in 1992, and the crime rate now is still about 4x what it was during 'racist America'. Nobody can say the America is 'more racist' now - the article affirms this.

So why - after so much 'social progress' - is there massively more crime in these areas?

I fully support addressing this problem - but racism is not the cause of 'mass violence' - and that we turn a blind eye to terrible behaviour is adding to the problem.

"Mass crime zones" are a direct product of racism. "

This is mostly false.

Many ethnic groups faced (and continue to face) serious racism over the years - and yet those places did not turn into war-zones.

Have you travelled the world? You will find 'high ethnic concentrations of marginalized people' in almost every country.

Go to a Korean enclave in Japan: the Koreans face open and overt discrimination and racism - and yet - no mass crime. In fact, hardly any crime at all.

Black people are openly discriminated against in Northern Africa by the Arabs there - but guess what - no mass crime. Crime by Sub-Saharan Africans in the Maghreb (at least in Tunisia) is lower than that of African Americans in America.

Americans are in reality some of the least racist people in the world. Outside of the Western world - racism is basically the standard - it's out in the open. It's not often considered a 'social issue'.

Do you see racist acts around you? Probably not. Is it acceptable for anyone to use the n-word? No way. It's exceedingly rare for Americans to act in overtly racist manner, though obviously, a lot of systematic racism exists.

On the contrary - there is an extreme degree of racial sensitivity in America in almost every organization and societal level.

Obviously - African Americans are a very special case, and racism is a contributing factor - but it is not the root cause.

Turning a blind eye to extraordinarily bad behaviour - and worse - glamorizing it - is probably the worst thing we could possibly do to help. Validating the worst possible people as 'role models' for young, troubled men is basically insane.

+1 to this.

> Latin America, for example, "race" isn't as pointed (see the notion of a Mexican race)

The notion of the Mexican race (more accurately, the Mexican-originated concept of a distinct Ibero-American race which had ancestry in all of but was distinct from the other races) was a 20th Century deliberate propaganda construct of the Mexican Revolution, specifically intended to (and not entirely successful at doing so, though it certainly had some effect) address the fact that race was historically an enormous dividing force in the country -- which had the same kind (with different details) of official complex categories of pure and mixed races and social hierarchies between them as many other heavily-race-divided societies.

So, it kind of illustrates the opposite of your point.

And, in practice, while the detailed hierarchy and rules of mixture no longer exists, and efforts to create a unifying identity have nibbled away at the edges, the high level social hierarchy between European, indigenous, and African races is still very much a thing (and not just a matter of "skin color", though, as most places, that's obviously one of the most visible and powerful indicators of race.)

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